Saturday, October 16, 2010

Homeschool: We had several short days of school this week, but are still staying on track. I'm trying to stick to my guns on having the kids work on their core subjects every day. Landon and Kennady have to do some Language Arts and some Math every day, and we're fitting in Science and Social Studies as we can. Spencer has a heavier "everyday" load of work, but he is proving to be quite diligent and is getting the work done without complaint. :-) Kennady is having a great time, because Gramma is the "guest teacher" for HomeEc, which is working out wonderfully! I've allowed them to skip ahead in the workbook so Kennady could work on some sewing and this week she has completed her first hand-sewing project, a teddy-bear pincushion. Except she decided that she didn't need another pincushion so she stuffed it with soft polyfill and it is a little stuffed toy. (Because she doesn't have enough of those... LOL) In Science we talked about metals this week, and since I didn't think it worthwhile to buy silver polish when I don't have anything much to polish, we tried making a homemade silver dip to remove tarnish from the one silver item I could locate quickly - a baby hairbrush. It did look better after the dip and a bit of polishing, but certainly not a dramatic difference. I think it was good enough that the kids could see a difference and understand a little bit about the effects of oxidation on metals.

We also collected a few metal alloy items to get an idea of what different metal alloys look like and are used for.

We talked about crystals but didn't bother "growing" any of our own, since both kids remembered the previous time we'd tried that. We did gather up a collection of some crystals to examine a little though.

We found out that ceramics are actually crystalline as well, so we made a couple of atoms out of Sculpey - which is a ceramic!

In Other News: Monday was Thanksgiving in Canada, and although we didn't have the day off, we still wanted to celebrate. We did that on Sunday afternoon, by enjoying a turkey dinner (deep-fried turkey!) with our pastor and his family. Delicious food and good fellowship. And some cheap entertainment after dinner, as the kids enjoyed some "barrel-racing"

This was also birthday week - Harrison turned 18 and Spencer turned 16. Which is particularly hard to believe, since I am still barely out of my teens myself... 8-) My parents and I visited Harrison at his school on Thursday (his birthday) and then took him out for Panera. Friday was Spencer's birthday - we had to pick up Harrison after school, and then spent the evening at home. Spencer chose fettucine alfredo for his birthday dinner, and we played some family games in the evening.

Today we are doing some housecleaning in preparation for having company to dinner tomorrow afternoon. So probably I should just finish off this post and go do some cooking...

On the Bookshelf:

The Skin Map by Stephen R Lawhead (set aside again, I haven't had much time for reading)

The Fire by Katherine Neville

Have a New Kid by Friday by Dr Kevin Leman (highly recommended by a friend, so I am skimming through it at top speed!)

Reviewed The Prince by Francine Rivers on Kym's Bookcase (see Just A Second instead) - my favorite of the Sons of Encouragement series so far!

Just like you, I'm trying to make sure my little girls do their core subjects everyday. What a difference that makes! I don't do it with the older kids, since I'm not sure what their core subjects are! They are all important at this stage. LOL